My love of a well-told tale -- one that locks a circuit closed between spinner and recipient of the yarn -- has taken me on quite a journey over my career. Used to be a book editor, and then along came this thing called the Web. Over time, a wondrous array of storytelling tools have materialized; we've moved from text and pictures (produced and distributed at considerable expense) to things like podcasts and video and interactive/collaborative media, usually free or cheap and often displaying contributions in real-time.

And then there's data, and the incredible tools now available for presenting it in compelling visual form. I'm an absolute fiend for maps and data visualizations; I love that I can show you a map of North America festooned with photographs of pollution, or a graph of CO2 emissions worldwide, by country. And there are all sorts of interesting offshoots.

All of which is a long-winded way of indicating how tickled I was to find this map showing Wal-Mart's growth over its 45-year history. To give the flavor, I extracted some bits for the quickie animation shown below -- but you gotta go see the real thing for the full effect.

Wal-Mart as killer virus! (Unless you've resolutely shunned pop culture, a sawbuck says this will remind you of the "spreading-menace" simulations that have been a standard trope in countless apocalyptic fictions.) Now, I know there are reasons to consider mellowing one's opinion of Wal-Mart; I've written before about my struggle with this notion. And I admit that framing the company's growth in these terms is something of a cheap shot . But still ... I can't help but yearn for that pre-1962 landscape, before the giant cookie cutters began to be applied to the American scene.